Flying Lies
by The Anonymous Forgot my name
Summary: Post-BDM. Family. Her family. The horrors of What-Could-Have-Been.


**Now that it's a more reasonable hour, I've gone back and hopefully corrected all the errors I saw with less exhausted eyes. One really should not post things at 4AM. If I missed an error, please let me know.**

**Firefly/Serenity belongs to Whedon and everyone else who made the ship fly. **

For once in his life, he's silent. No time to open his gap and spew nonsense in the name of snark. They three need to get to the others, and quickly.

Quick as a Hawaii-printed flash, he's out of the seat and reaching for her hand when the glass shatters and spears pierce the pilot's seat where Wash had been sitting, not half a second before.

Of course, the idiot would try and take a second to gape at what could have been, but Zoe's having none of that. She knows better.

She drags him along, the first few meters after the Cap'n. Then they're running at the same pace, hand-in-hand, neither even flinching at the sound of more spears crashing through their home.

Zoe knows her orders, and will obey them to the letter. Hold the ground. Simple enough. They weren't Reavers, and she wasn't the first mate of a run-down, decrepit Firefly. She was a soldier, and they were the Alliance. The crates were her trench.

Wash proved himself with a gun the day that Niska almost took everything away from her. Jayne was a walking gun. River...was a wild card. Who knew how she would play this out. Inara didn't know guns very well but she knew her bow. Jayne taught Kaylee how to use a gun after the bounty hunter. Simon is still useless in a gunfight.

Zoe knew her way around a gun very well.

The Cap'n knows the gun as well as he knows himself. But he has a mission to do and so does she.

Hold the ground for as long as she can.

Which happens to be not long at all.

Try to keep everyone alive.

Kaylee goes down. That's the cue to fall back. Simon goes down. River goes out, and the medkit flies in. Zoe answers Jayne, and Wash kisses the back of her hand. If they were to die, let them die together.

But they don't die. The doors open and Mal steps through looking like death, but there's victory in his haggard steps. Then just as his eyes leave Inara's- -to meet his anxious gaze with Zoe's guilt-laden pair- -the doors open and River is there, looking very much alive.

And the true Alliance comes and it's the damned Operative who saves them.

They lost family in the Shepherd, and that wound is still raw and festering. And they lost a friend- -eccentricities aside- -in Mr. Universe, and they pay tribute to him as well. And to all the lives lost in order to bind them, justice has been served. In a way.

Wash holds her hand through the entire ceremony, small and simple as it is.

And they mourn their losses and ship flies true. The Alliance has fractures in its solid foundation, and the Operative disappears into the Black. Kaylee and Simon consummate their relationship and Zoe owes her husband a bit of cash for losing the bet. Inara returns to her shuttle for good and Wash owes his wife a small amount of cash for losing that bet. River is happier, saner, and takes an interest in flying, and Wash takes the time to teach her when he's not flying Serenity away from the dealers Mal royally pissed off.

Two months later they'll all realize she was pregnant as she fought behind the crate-trench, and they'll all be a little stunned at the horror of What-Could-Have-Been. She will be worried about Wash's reaction, but all he will do is cry and take her into his arms and tell her he loves her. She won't say anything, really, but her heart will be singing.

Mal will just sort of sit there, a bit in shell-shock as he tries to run the scenario of a baby on board, and he'll realize that things will be very different now, more than he ever imagined after Miranda. Kaylee will be ecstatic, and it will make Simon worry. Inara will be very sweet and a little aggravating after a while, but it will all be in the name of love.

Jayne will grumble to himself about no more sleep on the ship, but even he will be smart enough to never, ever say it in front of Zoe. River will go about the ship humming the lullabies from her childhood, and will steal from Simon's medical journals because she will want to be more involved in this baby's birth than her last one. She wonders to herself and aloud if this is what Simon felt when he found out she was coming.

Wash will insist on trying to convince the Cap'n to take the ship to a Core planet, his wife will deserve the best care, gorrammit, and he'll not allow Browncoat pride to get in the way of that. Zoe, of course, will shoot the idea down without a second thought, but Mal, at least, will take the time to point out that even if the Alliance has overtly stopped their pursuit of the Tams, handing over the pregnant woman who actively and successfully brought the Alliance to answer for questions they had tried so hard to make the 'Verse forget, and expect to be treated decent- -that was asking a bit much.

And they'll fight again, but then it won't be out of jealousy. It will be about Wash asserting dominance to protect his own, and it will be Mal not yelling like he could be, because this was Zoe they were talking about and he won't want to make her mad just then.

The fight will be about family, and one will never be able to stay mad for long over that.

And when Zoe wakes up alone with her mourning sickness, there will be nothing left to do but pray for nightmares when she lays her head down to rest.

If she could have nightmares, she could see the idiot die talking when he should have been walking- -running. In the nightmares she should be having, Zoe knows Wash is dead, and won't wake up thinking he would be there, ready to rub her back as she vomits.

**"Mourning sickness" was not one of those errors.**


End file.
